DIRTY BOMBS In 2004, experts warned in the Wall Street Journal that a terrorist attack with a dirty bomb was imminent. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says a dirty bomb would contaminate "up to several city blocks." Its advice, if one goes off, is to walk away and take a shower. At left, Seattle firefighters check for radiation, during a mock "dirty bomb" explosion. Here Seattle firefighters check for radiation during a mock "dirty bomb" explosion. Reuters file photo, 2003, by Robert Sorbo

Animal health workers vaccinate ducks at Nam Trieu commune in Vietnam's northern Ha Tay province, 45km (28 miles) south of Hanoi, September 8, 2005. The bird flu virus which first swept across much of Asia in late 2003 has killed 44 people, 23 of them since it returned last December. More than in any other country, what happens in the fight against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease in poor, densely populated Vietnam is vitally important to preventing a global avian flu pandemic, public health officials said. Picture taken on September 8, 2005. TO ACCOMPANY FEATURE BIRDFLU VIETNAM REUTERS/Kham Ran on: 10-09-2005
A vendor transports ducks to the Ha Vy poultry wholesale market in Vietnam's Ha Tay province. The birds make the trip in the same cramped conditions that are conducive to transmitting the avian bird flu. Public health officials worry that the deadly H5N1 virus could cause a global pandemic. 0

Photo: KHAM

Animal health workers vaccinate ducks at Nam Trieu commune in...

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CYBER TERROR: Cyber terror was suspected in the 2003 Northeast blackout. But the cause turned out to be incompetence and falling trees. The power outage did not degrade U.S. military capabilities or damage the economy. At left, New Yorkers watch in the dark as a packed bus passes them by. Associated Press file photo, 2003, by Diane Bondareef

CYBER TERROR: Cyber terror was suspected in the 2003 Northeast...

THE WAR ON HYPE / The deadly terror lurking around the corner may not be such a big, ominous threat after all

Americans receive a steady stream of warnings and alarms about new and horrific perils that await them. Pandemics, dirty bombs, cyber attacks, bioterror and other exotic threats are always on the verge of being unleashed onto a shamefully unprepared republic. Yet, judging from statistics on life expectancy, violent deaths and war, we live in much less perilous times than any generation before us.

Avian flu, for example. We are cautioned that a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 Spanish influenza outbreak, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives, is only months away. One World Health Organization estimate says 2 million to 7 million people will die in the next pandemic. But it is not 1918. The WHO reports that since 2003, there have been 152 cases of avian flu, resulting in 83 deaths. A flu pandemic has been regularly predicted since 1997 and (knock on wood) it has never arrived.

Or cyber terror. In 1995, the first in a long series of warnings of an "electronic Pearl Harbor" was made. Although terrorists have launched many attacks since 1995, none has involved cyber terror.

The closest thing to a cyber attack occurred in Australia, when a disgruntled employee who had designed the computer system for a sewage treatment plant was able to penetrate the network after 49 consecutive attempts that went unnoticed and release raw sewage. The government report on the incident says this produced an unbearable smell for several days. Residents were unhappy, but able to control their terror.

Cyber terror was at first suspected in the 2003 Northeast blackout. The cause turned out to be incompetence and falling trees. The widespread blackout did not degrade U.S. military capabilities, did not damage the economy, and caused neither casualties nor terror.

One lesson to draw from this is that large, modern economies are hard to defeat. Their vulnerability -- to cyber attack or dirty bombs or the other exotic weapons -- is routinely exaggerated.

Yes, computer networks are vulnerable to attack, but nations are not equally vulnerable. Countries like the United States, with its abundance of services and equipment and the ability and experience in restoring critical functions, are well equipped to overcome an attack.

Dirty bombs -- conventional explosives mixed with radioactive material -- present another example of overreaction. In 2004, experts warned in the normally staid Wall Street Journal that a terrorist attack with a dirty bomb was an imminent certainty. They announced: "Shame on our leaders and on us if the lamentations of the next blue-ribbon panel will be intoned over the graves of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the collapse of our economy, and perhaps a fatal blow to our way of life."

But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says a dirty bomb would contaminate "up to several city blocks." The commission's advice, if one goes off, is to walk away and take a shower. Two decades ago we feared that hundreds of powerful Soviet nuclear weapons delivered simultaneously across the continent would kill hundreds of thousands, create economic collapse and deal a fatal blow to our way of life, but now we are told it can be done with a single small explosion. All of these dire prognostications remain unfulfilled.

What explains this discrepancy between risk and perception?

During the cold war, analysts became accustomed to thinking about horrible things that never happened -- from nuclear winter to atomic war. This willingness to suspend disbelief has carried over to the war on terrorism.

When the cold war ended, the United States reassessed what kinds of threats it would face in the future. A series of influential commissions concluded that new kinds of opponents would use asymmetric attacks and unconventional weapons against the American homeland. They would attack vulnerable civilian targets, as no one could challenge the U.S. military and win.

This assessment proved, unfortunately, to be correct, but its corollary -- that the new opponents would use unconventional weapons like cyber or bio -- missed the mark.

There are important differences between experts and terrorists. Experts imagine exotic attack scenarios. Terrorists are conservative. They prefer guns and bombs.

Osama bin Laden and his accomplices are sophisticated planners. They know that bombs work and that in civilian settings bombs cause terror. One of bin Laden's videos promises to repeat in America the London and Madrid bombings.

Attacks using exotic, untried weapons are more likely to be detected, more difficult to carry out and may not even work.

Our enemies in Iraq are innovators, creating new and deadly bombs every month, but there is yet to be a casualty from a dirty bomb, cyber, or bio attack. Terrorists have researched bioweapons and rejected them as unlikely to work. It is difficult to turn biological agents into weapons and deliver them -- even more difficult if the goal is mass casualties. Bio agents can be degraded by exposure to rain, sunlight, air, wind. Our opponents have decided that it is better to stick with something they know will work.

The media, particularly television, prefers to translate complex risks into simple and dramatic tales. Eighty-three people dying in six years is tragic, but not news. Deadly chickens sweeping out of China to infect millions appeals to alarmism and anxiety and attracts audiences and talking heads.

A changing American political culture makes our leaders more anxious. Since the 1960s, the U.S. government has become progressively more cautious and risk-averse.

Signs of this change are diffuse and anecdotal, but they include a loss of confidence among governing elites, declining public trust in government (which we try to fix by increasing accountability and oversight and end up doing even more damage) and a more partisan and punitive political environment. The result is to discourage innovation and make government timid: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is criticized for being slow in responding to Katrina, but FEMA employees who bought sleeping bags, ice and flashlights for refugees without waiting for approval from Washington are being investigated for wasting government money.

Exaggerated concerns shape our spending and strategies for counterterrorism and public health (even if our implementation of these strategies is at times so lax as to appear to welcome risk with open arms).

Bin Laden is probably still chuckling over televised images of Congress fleeing the Capitol in panic over reports that a tiny errant Cessna might fly its way. Perhaps exaggeration happens more often in Washington or on university campuses, places that are several steps removed from the harsh edge of conflict and where rhetoric is prized above realism.

Radiological, bio or cyber weapons all create risk, but the likelihood of attack and the potential for damage varies widely from weapon to weapon. The more exotic the attack, the less likely it is to occur or to succeed. Our public discourse does the nation a disservice by not recognizing this.